Goblin, 2015

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Green Fiend, 2015

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Superfood, exhibition view at Acappella, Napoli

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Green Goddess, 2015

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Superfood, exhibition view at Acappella, Napoli

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Superfood, exhibition view at Acappella, Napoli

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Superfood, exhibition view at Acappella, Napoli

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Endless Summer, 2015

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Hulk, 2015

all images: courtesy of the artist and Acappella, Napoli

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Eat Your Greens! could have been the title of KATHARINA FENGLER‘s latest exhibition at Acappella in Napoli. Rather, she has chosen SUPERFOOD, a term used in food industry and marketing in order to promote specifically supposed healthy products and which is highly exploited thanks to the health craze that is going around right now.

According to the press release, the exhibition SUPERFOOD ‘imbibes the juice of marketing and claims to be nothing but healthy’. The paintings in the show embrace bright grassy greens that have been airbrushed on Tyvek – a material used for packaging and for transporting both, food and art – in attempt to ‘leave you feeling calm, refreshed and compassionate’.

Even if this work focuses on latent ideologies and the emotional fallout within commercial consumption itself, the question of the body seems to be central to these artworks.

➝ SUPERFOOD is on view at Acappella in Napoli until July 1, 2015.

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IMPRESSION, 2015
used moving blanket (Overgaden, Copenhagen), stretcher bars, 150×175 cm

IMPRESSION, 2015
used moving blanket (CO2, Torino), stretcher bars, 100×125 cm

IMPRESSION, 2015
used moving blanket (Toves, Copenhagen), stretcher bars, 160×155 cm

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The three pieces above are part of the ongoing series entitled Impression (2012-2015) by Danish artist MIKKEL CARL which are currently presented in his first institutional solo exhibition at the Kunsthal Nord in Aalborg (Danemark). The series consists of ‘blanket pieces’ coming from galleries, art venues and institutions that CARL has had to work with. Each blankets are stretched on to frames, the dimension of each ‘canvas’ corresponds to the size of the blanket minus 10cm of either side.

The artist’s seemingly minimal and spatial interventions show an intense interest in the emotional potential for objects to transmit meaning: the fabric not only refers to art history but also creates a dialogue between the art spaces that bind them together and one cannot help but imagine the art objects the blankets used to protect, hence the title.

→ We Are All Workers is on view at Kunsthal Nord, Aalborg until June 21, 2015

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a glimpse into the installation Aushub aus Basel (2015) by LARA ALMARCEGUI
seen at Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz/Basel
on Friday, May 22, 2015
image © wfw

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this exhibition runs through July 12, 2015. Please note also that an artist talk with LARA ALMARCEGUI will take place during artbasel on Thursday, June 18, 2015 at the Kunsthaus Baselland, more infos here

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a piece from the solo exhibition* of SANDRINE PELLETIER
seen at Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle
on Thursday, May 21 2015
image © wfw

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*Only the ocean is pacific is on view till May 31, 2015

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Sterile, 2014
goldfish, dimensions variable

image courtesy the artists

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Sterile (2014) is an installation by REVITAL COHEN and TUUR VAN BALEN which revolves around albino goldfish specifically designed to be born without reproductive organs. For this project 45 goldfishes were created by Professor YAMAHA ETSURO in his laboratory in Hokkaido, Japan. Even if it sounds totally abnormal, work with such modified fish is for the scientist, simply part of the daily research routine. Parallel to the fishes, the artists present a machine – put in stand-by mode –capable of extracting sperm and eggs to reproduce sterile fish infinitively.

As with much of REVITAL COHEN and TUUR VAN BALEN‘s works, Sterile (2014) ‘translates our times of automated and standardized production technologies, into a provocative installation that involves scientists in the development of the work in order to push the boundaries of material and process.

➝ Sterile (2014) is part of the exhibition Beastly that will open at Fotomuseum Winterthur on Friday, May 29, 2015.

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French artist MARGUERITE HUMEAU talked with ALISON HUGILL for BerlinArtLink earlier this month and gave a few keys concerning her work and especially her solo exhibition entitled Echoes presented at Duve that wfw visited during Berlin Gallery Weekend. Make sure to read the entire interview here and/or to watch more views of the exhibition here.

→ Echoes by MARGUERITE HUMEAU is on view at Duve in Berlin until June 6, 2015

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all images from the exhibition What You Desire, ROSA RENDL
at 21er RAUM, 21er HAUS, Vienna, 2015

images courtesy of the artist and 21er RAUM, 21er HAUS, Vienna

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The 21er RAUM, 21er HAUS in Vienna is currently presenting a solo exhibition of Austrian artist ROSA RENDL entitled What You Desire. The show consists of ten large-scale photographs taken with her smartphone. According to the press release, RENDL‘s images are ‘staged photographs that imitate, or rather emulate, the pictorial language of social networks’.

Although the pictures convey feelings of closeness, intimacy and vulnerability, the exhibition is less a matter of expressing oneself than consuming a raft of entertainment that posits the viewer/ the user of social networks/ you and me / the artist, as a certain type of consumer: you don’t express who you are, but communicate a self according to the standards of social media in order to – unconsciously or not – generate an audience.

What You Desire by ROSA RENDL not only questions the representation amid a media-saturated society but also the traps involved in inquiring into identity and its constructions.

→ What You Desire is on view at 21er RAUM, 21er HAUS, Vienna until June 7, 2015.

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Intimacy, 2015
hubcap, glazed ceramic, 45 cm diameter
image courtesy of the artist and Bodega, New York

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Intimacy (2015) is a piece by ALLISON KATZ which consists of a wheel cover inhabited by a strange ceramic figure exuding a profound idea of secrets, hiding and transformation.

Intimacy (2015) is part of a group show entitled Kleenex Rose along with the work of LUIS MIGUEL BENDAÑA, CAMILLE BLATRIX & MATT PAWESKI, LIZ CRAFT, ORION MARTIN, AUTUMN RAMSEY, EM ROONE.

The sunlight has ripened further, the peddlers are farther away, the warm produce is more acrid, in the markets of the world, along inexpressibly perfumed boulevards, on shores of seas, at the foot of volcanoes. I rejoice as one rejoices sowing seed with a fervor that mixes irreconcilable substances, magmas without amalgam, when life is April’s lemon and rose.*

➝ Kleenex Rose is on view at Bodega, New York until June 14, 2015. Make sure to view more views of this exhibition via http://bodega-us.org/kleenexrose.html

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*press release

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all images courtesy of the artist and Francesca Minini, Milano

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Buongiorno Signor Courbet, a solo exhibition by SIMON DYBBROE MØLLER
on view at Francesca Minini in Milano
until July 31, 2015

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chosen by curator and editor DOMENICO DE CHIRICO

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detail from the installation Pave Me A River* by DANIEL PETERSON
seen at Taylor Macklin, Zürich
on Friday, May 15, 2015
image © wfw

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*on view until June 7, 2015

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view from Plymidae, a solo exhibition by URBAN ZELLWEGER
seen at Plymouth Rock, Zürich
on Friday, May 15, 2015
image © wfw

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Care Work, 2015

image courtesy of the artist and Neumeister Bar-Am, Berlin

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This work was made by KATE COOPER specifically for Der Würfel, the 80 cm cubed project space at Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin and it’s called Care Work (2015).

As with much of Rigged, KATE COOPER’s recent exhibition at KW in Berlin,  this piece, featuring a delicate portrait of computer-generated female model, stresses the visual strategies of commercial brands and thus explores the misrepresentations we encounter in many forms everyday, but also questions the hierarchy of consumerism and art.

In all images, particularly of women, there’s a relationship to desire, and within that a real violence; especially within these CG images. Still, I feel like there must be a way to negotiate these worlds, explore their potential, and make them one’s own. It’s not about reclaiming the world or aesthetics of hypercapitalism, but about occupying or invading it. I find that an interesting proposition to myself as an artist. Maybe there’s a freedom in the things that are supposed to restrict us. – KATE COOPER in conversation with JEPPE UGELVIG for Dis Magazine

➝ Care Work is on view at Der Würfel at Neumeister Bar-Am in Berlin until June 27, 2015.

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Ghost Ship, 2005
thirty-foot handmade sixern sailboat, computers and software, hydraulics, Global Positioning System, auto rudder, rigging; Mast: 360 in (914.4 cm); Overall: 72 x 102 x 360 in (182.9 x 259 x 914.4 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian Gallery
© The Locus+ Archive

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Ghost Ship (2005) is probably one of my favorite artworks by the late American artist CHRIS BURDEN. The project involved the construction of a crewless, self-navigating sailing boat that the artist guided remotely by a computer, on a 400-mile journey from off the coast of Scotland down to Newcastle during the Tall Ships race in July 2005.

The project consisted also to develop its own specifically designed website used to show and archive the projects development; during the sailing itself photographic footage and to the progress reports.

You have to tack and you are trying to get to a point but to tack to get there you have to integrate the different elements like wind speed, and wind angle. It’s theoretically possible I believe, I don’t know of anyone who has done it yet. I know there is a little contest of model sailboats in England that was approaching that but I never really followed up on that. The Ghost Ship was semi autonomous, in other words you couldn’t really put in latitude and longitude and there were British Maritime laws and we had to be on a mother ship, basically it was a giant radio controlled sail boat. You still couldn’t dial in the latitude and longitude but it was a step in the right direction. They were both about the same theme. I believe it’s possible and it will probably happen someday because it makes sense. Why wouldn’t you want a freighter with only one or two crew members on board? Why wouldn’t you use the wind to sail across the ocean? – CHRIS BURDEN in conversation with GARY WISEMAN, November 2011

Ghost Ship (2015) offered a popular science point of entry into understanding the complexities of universal technologies.  And as with much of CHRIS BURDEN’s work this body of work cannot be reproduced and exists only in a certain place and time, recorded only through carefully selected video and photographic documentation.

In a certain kind of sense I am trying to push a limit. I did about 70 performances and I thought of myself as a sculptor too. That is how I got into performances. I think the first time, after graduate school, that I didn’t do a performance was the B-Car. That was a change in my career because I was supposed to go to Europe and do two performances, but then came up with this idea of building a car that I could build myself, that would be revolutionary, and showing the car in one space and then driving it to the second venue in Paris, where I had a show, would constitute the “performance”. That’s how I got there. Yeah, I think there is a question about where the limits are and the B-Car was tiny, I could pick it up. I could hold it over my head. – CHRIS BURDEN in conversation with GARY WISEMAN, November 2011

After its maiden and only voyage, Ghost Ship (2005) hung on the façade of the New Museum as part of the Façade Sculpture Program from September 2013 to January 2015.

Please note that an exhibition of recent sculptures by CHRIS BURDEN opened at Gagosian Le Bourget on May 2 and will remain on view till September 19, 2015.

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all images courtesy of the respective artists and Tomorrow, New York

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‘—‘, a group exhibition with ROSA AIELLO, NADIA BELERIQUE, MAX BRAND and DAVID RAPPENEAU
on view at Tomorrow in New York
until May 24, 2015

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chosen by curator and editor DOMENICO DE CHIRICO*

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Here is a short excerpt from the very interesting conversation between German filmmaker and writer HITO STEYERL and LAURA POITRAS that has been released in the latest issue of Artforum and which is now available online.

Please note also that a survey of HITO STEYERL‘s video work from 2004 to the present is on view at Artists Space in New York until May 24. She is also part of the German pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. Filmmaker, and journalist LAURA POITRAS will present her work at the Whithney Museum of American Art in New York next year from February 5 to May 15, 2016.

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